Identifying your business mission is key to success

Having a clearly defined mission is key to any company’s success. There has to be a goal. At the Chamber we crystallised ours as ‘connecting, supporting and giving voice to every Norfolk business’.

How you achieve strategic success is all about the tactical steps you take along the way. We recognised four crucial objectives we needed to achieve, or deliver, our strategy.

Trust – to be totally transparent about what we do and to genuinely represent the interests of our customers, so we are trusted.

Expertise – to ensure that everyone we connect with or recommend has genuine expertise so that we are experts at identifying experts and by doing so make sure that we are the Bentley of the business support industry.

Networking – stay connected with businesses with the community, linking needs with solutions.

Partnership – we are working with you, not for you, we are with you as your needs or circumstances change. We won’t assume one size fits all in the service that we offer so that you receive the support you need.

That "one size fits all" – because it doesn’t – problem is something we addressed in West Norfolk. We relaunched ourselves here and are now the Norfolk Chambers rather than Chamber of Commerce; a subtle but significant difference.

In strategic terms I think what’s really important is that our strategy, tactics and goals chime precisely with any company’s planning. It’s an affirmation of the Chamber’s relevance, now and for the future.

So, too, are some other elements of the Chamber’s strategy. We want to create a working culture focused towards customer engagement and support;

create new ways to engage and connect; build new technology, so we are reaching out to more people, engaging with them and representing their interests 24/7.

Any and all of that checklist would work for you and your business wouldn’t it? You could call it practicing what we preach or you could say we’re directly in touch with how commerce in West Norfolk works. Frankly, I’m happy with either. Or both.